Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Follow the Bargain Hounds

Natalie Leeds Leventhal (shown here), Annelise Peterson and Samantha Kain have rules to determine what to bring home and when.Credit
Erin Baiano for The New York Times

IT takes a cool head and a keen fashion compass to navigate the winter sales. But Tammy Eckenswiller, a style executive for an Internet fashion retailer, has scoped that terrain long enough to know that patience pays. Even now, weeks deep into the discount season, she has unearthed deals, among them a handful of items she sighted when they first bowed on the runways last spring.

There was the mink-trimmed jacket from The Row, spotted at Zoë in Brooklyn last week, or the Tiffany blue cocoonlike Céline coat, marked at $2,730, a 40 percent discount. “This piece is a little beyond me,” Ms. Eckenswiller had to concede. Hardly fazed, she darted toward another corner of the store and discovered a candy pink Alexander McQueen cocktail frock tagged at $1,197. “I’ll follow this one,” she said, holding out for the next round of price drops — an additional discount of 20 percent.

“Sure, you’re gambling every time you let something go that you’re going to lose it,” she said. “But that’s the fun.”

Spirited and primed for a challenge, Ms. Eckenswiller is one in a sisterhood of like-minded shoppers, inveterate trappers who stalk sales systematically, a canny method in their seemingly chaotic ways. Armed with sense, strict budgets and a zest for the chase, most are quick to ferret out those items destined to survive in their closets for more than a season, pieces they have scouted in stores and online, no prize too remote, too rare or too obscure to escape their eye.

Photo

Tammy Eckenswiller inspects the racks for deep discounts at Zoë in Brooklyn.Credit
Erin Baiano for The New York Times

“I fare-track for fashion,” said Annelise Peterson, explaining that she hunts luxury labels with much the same ardor she reserves for tracking airline discounts. “Travel sites send e-mail alerts,” said Ms. Peterson, a fashion consultant. “I wish there was something like this for clothes.”

She has cultivated the next best thing, a reliable human-alert system. “It’s important to find a great source, a salesperson to point you to pieces that match your taste,” she said. So well acquainted are some sales associates with Ms. Peterson’s predilection for subtle prints, luxurious cashmere and well-cut coats that they call or text her days before her quarry reaches the racks.

Salesclerks are the first in a succession of filters Ms. Peterson deploys before flicking down her credit card. She seriously considers only those items that perfectly fit her lanky 5-foot-11 frame, are in tune with her moderately progressive sensibilities and reflect their designer’s trademark aesthetic. She rejects far more than she buys. “If I can walk away the first time, it means I can live without it,” she said coolly.

Trend-driven designs scarcely register on Ms. Peterson’s style radar. “So many people are doing this scuba look,” she said the other day, examining a Stella McCartney tricolor sheath at Bergdorf Goodman. “It isn’t signature Stella,” she pronounced before giving the dress a pass.

She veered momentarily toward the shoe department, admiring a pair of gold leather sandals ($815). “A good sale shoe,” she decided. “Classic Manolo Blahnik, no gimmicks.” Platform pumps, offered in profusion, did not rate a second look. “At my height, no way,” she said. “Who wants to look tranny-tastic?”

Photo

Annelise Peterson.Credit
Erin Baiano for The New York Times

Bergdorf was rife with tempting distractions, not least a tawny Jil Sander raincoat, with a zip-up white turtleneck liner. Points in its favor included its price, marked down 40 percent from its original $1,990. “And of course it’s signature Jil Sander,” Ms. Peterson said sagely. She wavered nonetheless.

“It’s really important that you don’t get so caught up in the game that you lose sight of what the goal is,” she said. “And that’s adding a great investment piece to your closet.”

Yes, the season is waning, but Ms. Peterson planned to bide her time, having observed that while some racks were picked over, there were plenty of bargains worth chasing. A riotously patterned Peter Pilotto dress or a retina-searing pink Lanvin ball gown that seemed over the top at the start of the season can appear reasonable now, resistance softening when the price is right. That $4,290 Oscar de la Renta evening dress in blazing silver sequins at Saks Fifth Avenue is somewhat less of an extravagance at $2,574. The silky tie-front frock by Rachel Zoe at Bloomingdale’s seems downright sensible when cut to $340, from $425.

IT was a dizzying Erdem floral print dress ($1,099) that caught the eye of Natalie Leeds Leventhal at Barneys New York last week. It was one in a trove of designer wares that merited a second look from Ms. Leventhal, a society figure. As did an Azzedine Alaïa scalloped dress and bolero in a zigzagging geometric print, marked down to $2,100 and collectible, said Ms. Leventhal, who has made the designer’s close fit and spiraling seams signatures of her own.

Would the dress fit? No. Gamely she moved on, glancing more than cursorily at two Lanvin evening dresses, the first, effusively ruffled, reduced to $3,079, from $5,130, a veritable steal to her mind.

Photo

Samantha Kain.Credit
Erin Baiano for The New York Times

Ms. Leventhal is among a small circle of affluent shoppers who nonetheless operate under a set of stringently self-imposed rules. She will pay full price only for items so ardently sought-after that they are likely to vanish the moment they arrive in stores. The rest of the time she exerts the kind of discipline her peers would find extreme, tracking favorite pieces from the moment they arrive on the runways. Among them this season was a black, navy and cream Chanel jacket with amethyst buttons the store has been holding for her since Chanel announced its sale at the start of this month.

As important as knowing when to buy is where to scout. Ms. Leventhal’s questing eye has led to her to far-flung and unlikely destinations. “There is an amazing man at Nordstrom in Seattle,” she enthused. “It’s the flagship, and they have every designer imaginable. He is constantly texting me with pictures of new arrivals on sale.”

SAMANTHA KAIN, a public relations executive, spares no effort in her pursuit of marked-down luxuries like the Anya Hindmarch multizippered handbag she recently found for $600, half its original price, at the designer’s uptown boutique. Even Web-based sample sales, like the one announced this month by the jeweler Alexis Bittar, are accessible to anyone who takes the time to log on, Ms. Kain said.

Earlier this year, Lisa Buckley, a lawyer in Manhattan, set her sights on a shapely Balenciaga jacket. “You could not get it in Manhattan,” she said. A subsequent Google search led her to Farfetch.com, which showcases luxury fashions from boutiques in Europe and the United States. She bought the jacket, available on the site through a boutique in southern France.

“If I see a runway piece I want,” Ms. Buckley said with an urgency not uncommon among her peers, “I will track it to the ends of the earth.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 13, 2012, on page E1 of the New York edition with the headline: Follow The Bargain Hounds. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe